


A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human

by Tesvyn



Series: The One-Shot March Challenge [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Chameleon Circuit (Doctor Who), Crack Treated Seriously, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Good Dursley Family (Harry Potter), Harry Potter Doesn't Like Vegetables, Harry Potter is Good With Computers, Harry Potter is Good With Languages, Harry Potter is Half-TARDIS, Lily Evans Potter Was a TARDIS, Mount Everest, Multi, One Shot, Polyamory, Sentient TARDIS, TARDIS Flight, Time Vortex (Doctor Who), Trauma, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29870778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tesvyn/pseuds/Tesvyn
Summary: Chameleon Circuits are designed to help TARDISes blend in to their surroundings and avoid detection.Lily Evans Potter is a result of this, and Harry's biology is a little bit strange as a consequence.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood
Series: The One-Shot March Challenge [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187630
Comments: 3
Kudos: 62





	A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human

Harry was a strange child, everyone on Privet Drive knew that.

Petunia had investigated it and had decided it was likely due to the trauma of watching both of his parents get murdered, even if he was too young at the time to truly remember it.

The Dursleys were praised for looking after such a traumatised child and getting him the help, he so desperately needed at a young age, signing him up for therapy to help him cope with it.

He was never told that his parents had died in a car crash, and the neighbours never believed that the small child was a delinquent.

Dudley took his role as adoptive big brother very seriously, especially after he learnt just why his tiny cousin acted as he did.

Everyone in the neighbourhood felt pity for the boy, which suited him just fine.

No-one noticed when he would disappear for hours at a time, believing him to have found a quiet place in the local woods to think when he needed time alone.

No-one noticed when his hair would change colours ever so slightly, or when his eyes would glow gold.

The teachers praised his language skills, amazed at how quickly he'd picked up French, Spanish, Italian, and German, and just how fast he became fluent in them.

When the school had managed to get a hold of a computer to teach their students about the technology of the future, Harry had been allowed to use it after school while waiting for Dudley to finish at his football club.

The teaching assistant who was put in charge of watching over him had sat there in amazed silence as Harry quickly figured out how programming worked and began working on a very basic puzzle game.

What no-one realised was that Harry's mind worked just like a computer, able to store far more information with a far reduced chance of memory becoming corrupted.

And the reason behind this lay solely with his mother.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

Lily Evans had been adopted.

It was a rather well-kept secret, the baby girl had been found abandoned in the shed of the Evans family, and they'd fallen in love with her instantly.

She was a bit strange and growing up had a few communication problems while learning to talk, which she eventually grew out of.

One of her strangest speech patterns had been her inability to figure out which tense she should be using, often mixing up the past tense with the future tense.

What no-one had known was that Lily hadn't been human, in fact, she'd actually been grown on another planet altogether.

Lily had been a TARDIS, one who's Chameleon Circuit had managed to take on a human-like form, she'd fallen in love with a human, and her form had been organic enough to carry a child.

And she'd loved that child enough to die.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

Harry's ability to fade in and out of the physical plane had been discovered by accident when he was seven, there was a strange man following him and he'd just wanted to get away as fast as possible.

He'd quickly found himself in a strange place, there was no floor or sky, and everything was swirling patterns of purple, blue, and red.

He was floating, similar to when he went swimming, but without anything dragging him down, weightless.

Looking around, he realised that if he focused enough, he could see exit points all around and that he could see events going on through them.

Places in the future, places in the past, his bedroom on the same day and time that he'd entered this place.

It was amazing, but as much as Harry wanted to explore, he knew that he didn't want to be stranded ten years in the future without knowing how to get back to this place so he could go home.

So, he exited in his bedroom, making a note to find out how he'd gotten there in the first place and try and replicate it.

It would be pretty cool to see what the world would be like in a hundred years or so.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

Contrary to popular belief, Harry did in fact remember his parents, he also remembered all of their friends, such as Sirius and Remus.

He remembered his mother telling him stories of what she really was, remembered her promises to show him everything, quite literally, when he was older.

He remembered how she'd mourned that she would be unable to do that after learning about the prophecy.

Harry remembered her stories of a war that could have wiped out the universe, and how she'd escaped by herself, being forced to leave her pilot behind as a time lock was forced onto the planet.

She knew that there were a few others out there and had told him to seek one of his aunts out when he was old enough to live on his own at around eighteen human years.

Harry remembered the night she died, as the horrifying looking man with red eyes killed her and then tried to kill him.

His mother had protected him with her death, by forcing her console open and flooding the room with the light of time itself, something which didn't affect him, as he too held that same light inside of him.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

When Harry's Hogwarts letter came, his aunt and uncle didn't try and hide it from him, instead, Petunia sat him down and had a long talk with him about the Wizarding World and how it worked.

She asked him how he felt about returning to the world that had caused the death of his parents, explained the war that had torn apart the magical population of England, which had begun to leak out into the rest of the United Kingdom.

She made absolutely sure that he wanted to go.

Harry knew that he must return, he remembered Albus Dumbledore telling his parents about the prophecy, he knew it spoke about him.

Thanks to his ability to fade through time, he knew that the prophecy was still incomplete and that he must finish it before he did anything else.

How could he defeat a magical dark lord without learning magic himself?

He didn't tell his adoptive aunt about this of course, as she'd never let him leave her sight if she learnt about the prophecy which marked him as a future murderer.

Dudley had been sad to learn that he was going but understood that he wanted to learn something that his parents had known.

He did threaten to break into the school should he find out anyone had been bullying him for either his strange outlook on life or his small height, which wasn't actually that small if you knew that it typically took a TARDIS about five hundred to two-thousand years to mature.

Petunia took him to get his school stuff, and when he found out he had a vault full of gold, he forced her to take some of it.

Harry knew that his aunt and uncle were actually in debt, not that they knew that he knew.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

During his school years, Harry made some very good friends, Hermione, Neville, and Luna.

Hermione was very smart, her parents, while Dentists now, used to work for a place called 'UNIT', which specialised in alien life.

Neville knew a lot about plants and was a very good listener who had a lot of good advice, his parents were sadly hospitalised.

Luna was odd, but her outlook on life was very similar to Harry's own, and so they often talked about strange things for hours, things which confused both Hermione and Neville.

The four of them had been forced to go camping for a year while looking for Horcruxes, which had only made them grow closer as friends, and one night while they were huddled in the small living room of their expanded tent, Harry came clean about what his mother had been.

They had taken it surprisingly well, especially Hermione, whose parents had at one point worked with a man called 'the Doctor', who piloted one of his aunts.

Harry had become excited by the news because if this Doctor had been active on Earth at a point recently enough that the parents of someone his age had physically met him, it meant that there was a high chance that he could meet him, and thus one of his aunts.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

After the war was over, and after he'd finished his education at Hogwarts, Harry bought a flat in the middle of London, it had been going cheap due to the many disasters that happened nearby.

Disasters that Harry knew to be caused by aliens.

Living in a hot spot for alien activity was never boring, his neighbour who lived across the hall was some kind of canine alien, who's species was completely magical.

He wore a glamour outside of his flat, which made him appear human, and the two of them got on very well, especially after he'd found out that Harry didn't care what he looked like.

He honestly reminded Harry of Sirius, with his sense of humour and fashion choice, he even worked at a garage, fixing up cars and motorbikes.

The area was such a hot spot for alien activity that Hermione, who now worked in the magical equivalent of UNIT, following in her parent's footsteps, had installed a bunch of sensors and alarms in his flat.

She'd had to come back the day after to tune him out of the sensors, as it was constantly detecting him, which he found hilarious.

He was also unsurprised to find out that it wasn't sensing him as an alien lifeform, but an alien spacecraft.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

TARDISes were grown in a way similar to plants, even though they were made up of technology, it was why they were so sentient, they weren't just machines.

It was why a TARDIS could reject a pilot if they didn't like them, it was why they could lock the doors without anyone else's input, it was why they could pilot themselves to an extent.

A lot of Timelords tended to forget that fact and were brutally reminded that they were living beings by being dumped in random places without any warning.

When a supposedly secret organisation had come to his part of London to investigate the large amounts of alien activity, he was of course, unsurprised that they had interviewed him for any information that he had.

However, their leader, Jack, just wouldn't stop flirting with him.

Harry retaliated by grabbing him and dragging him through what he had learnt was the Vortex of Time and dumped him at the peak of Mount Everest.

The man gaped at him, and Harry quickly faded out before he could react, taking himself to Luna's house instead of his flat to avoid the very likely angry group of people who would be more interested in shooting him before asking any questions.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

"So," Harry heard a somewhat familiar voice begin, as someone sat down next to him in the Leaky Cauldron, where he and Neville had gone for a drink, "mind telling me how you dragged me through time to Mount Everest?"

Harry froze, and looked at the man out of the corner of his eye, quickly downing the rest of his drink, he turned to Neville.

"Sorry, I've just remembered something I need to do," he didn't wait for a response from the man, knowing he wouldn't take offence, and began fading from sight.

"Oh no you don't," the man exclaimed, launching himself at him and grabbing hold of his wrist, just as he was pulled into the Vortex.

Harry stared wide-eyed at the man, who appeared used to the floating sensation, instead pulling back his sleeves, checking for something.

"No Vortex Manipulator," the man mused, "how are you doing this?" he demanded.

They stared at each other for a moment in silence, he opened his mouth to respond, when something hit them, and Harry lost consciousness.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

When Harry came to, he found himself in a strange-looking infirmary, a drip of some kind inserted into his arm.

After a few moments, something seemed to sense that he was awake and he was bombarded with inquiries on his operational status, and his sluggish mind came to the conclusion that the thing that had hit him had actually been one of his aunts and he was in her medical bay.

Harry turned his head to the side as he heard the door open, and a man walked in, muttering to himself before he realised, he was awake.

Once he realised, he became rather excited, and began babbling to him, he spoke far too quickly for his groggy mind to keep up with, but he did recognise that he was going on about the fact that he was half-human and half-TARDIS.

He blinked slowly at him, and he seemed to catch on to the fact that he wasn't quite ready for an onslaught of information.

"-Anyway, I'm the Doctor," the Timelord introduced himself, holding his hand out close to his hand, understanding that he was still a bit out of it.

"Harry," he croaked at him, grabbing his hand, and shaking it.

The Doctor beamed at him, then turned to check something on one of the screens that were hooked up to machines, obviously monitoring his health.

The door opened again and Jack, the man who'd grabbed onto him walked in, Harry glared at him and pushed himself as far away from him as the bed would allow.

"Ah, sleeping beauty awakes!" he cheerfully greeted him, as though he hadn't assaulted him and then distracted him while he was in the Vortex, leading to him getting hit by his aunt.

Harry turned over, careful of the drip still in his arm, making sure he didn't face the man.

"I suppose that's fair," he said guiltily, from the way he walked into the room, Harry could tell that he was familiar with the TARDIS they were currently on board, if that was the case then he was also familiar with the pilot.

If both those things were true, then the man had more than likely been told just what he'd done and why it was so wrong.

Harry was only twenty-seven, when compared with how long it took for a TARDIS to mature, he was very much still a child.

In fact, he looked like he was only just twenty, and that was only because he made himself look that age through the ingrained Chameleon Circuit that he'd inherited from his mother.

Unlike a regular Chameleon Circuit, Harry couldn't take on the form of anything that he wanted to be, it worked more like the Metamorphmagus abilities that Tonks had shown, but without the restrictions of the person's mass.

Which meant that he could make himself look like a grown man when he was supposed to look more like a five-year-old because he was nowhere near finished growing.

Harry let himself drift off to sleep to the sound of the Doctor humming at a screen while his aunt cooed at him.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

Harry stayed with the Doctor after that day, much to the delight of both the Timelord and his aunt, who was more than happy to teach him the things he needed to know as someone who was half-TARDIS.

The Doctor found him endlessly fascinating, often theorising just how he'd come to be, as his existence shouldn't be physically possible.

Harry had bought up the fact that both his mother and father had magic and suggested it as the cause of his existence, which had opened an entirely new can of worms when the Doctor had been let loose in Wizarding Britain.

Hermione, Neville, and Luna ended up joining the Doctor as companions for a while, wanting to make sure he wasn't being held against his will, eventually leaving when they were sure everything was alright.

One of the most interesting things to come about from the seven months they'd spent onboard was that the three of them had entered a polyamorous relationship.

Harry thought they made a rather balanced relationship.

They often visited the three, and even went to their wedding, where Harry was the ringbearer because he'd let up on holding his Chameleon Circuit in place and had returned to his much smaller and more comfortable form, and so couldn't be the best man.

They spent a couple of decades travelling without companions, giving him a chance to learn the things his mother should have taught him.

The Doctor calmed down about his existence after a decade, instead becoming sad that there wasn't a Tot around his age for him to bond to, something which Harry understood was similar to a familiar bond, a friend for life, seeing the Doctor and his aunt's bond, he could understand the appeal of it.

Other than those moments of sadness, they enjoyed their travelling.

And then they went to a hospital in 2007.

_**A Half-TARDIS's Report On Being Human** _

Martha was funny, but she thought he was a human child, something which he could understand, but didn't quite appreciate.

She quickly learnt that wasn't the case, which helped her to understand that not everything was as it seemed.

They travelled around at a far quicker pace than he was used to, getting into wacky adventures, some of which he wasn't allowed to join in because the humans they encountered thought he was too young to be there, and generally causing chaos in the name of good.

And then Jack appeared, throwing them to the end of the universe.

Harry, not wanting to be around Jack opted to remain on board his aunt, instead waiting for them to return.

Which was how he found himself face to face with the second Timelord he'd ever met.

Said Timelord stood gaping at him.

Harry stared at him blankly, "just get it over with."

"You're half-TARDIS."

"And those clothes make you look like an eighteenth-century peasant that broke into a wealthy man's house to steal his clothes."

He looked down at his clothes and pouted, "I could do with a wardrobe change," he admitted.

The door was flung open, moments later, as the new Timelord had been too busy gawking at him to hijack his aunt, and so the Doctor managed to force the door open again.

The Doctor dropped Martha and Jack back off on Earth, neither having anything against the new Timelord other than disliking his personality.

The Master joined their little group that day, bringing with him sarcasm, guns much to the Doctor's disapproval, and vegetables.

Harry didn't like the vegetables.

The four of them continued to travel, occasionally picking up new humans to join them on their adventures, and occasionally popping to see Harry's friends and adoptive family, slowly easing his way out of the public eye as time went on, then eventually disappearing once they'd all passed on.

Harry occasionally went off on his own, sometimes he took the Master with him, but he always returned.

He lived a very long life for a human, but a very short life for a TARDIS, passing of old age at 3,927, something which saddened the Doctor, the Master, and his aunt.

He was cremated, and his urn sat on top of a fireplace in what had been his room.

Harry's afterlife was spent jumping between the human afterlife to see his father, friends, and adoptive family, and the Matrix, where deceased TARDISes and Timelords went when they died, having fun with his mother and the regenerations of the Doctor and the Master that he'd known.

All in all, Harry thought he'd had a pretty good life.


End file.
